Much like young Zonker Harris, I too have been on something of a sabbatical. It was not a planned sabbatical, it sort of snuck up on me. In fact, I only realized I was on a sabbatical a few weeks ago. I was having dinner with some professor friends, one of whom was applying for an actual teaching sabbatical. During this discussion of the process is when I had the epiphany. “I’ve been on sabbatical,” I announced, pointing eagerly at my chest! “We’ve noticed,” they replied in unison. How is it they noticed? I hadn’t noticed. I hadn’t even known I’d been on sabbatical until just then. Prior to this dinner I just thought I was being distracted.

What’s been distracting me? My own advice. Actually a piece of my own advice. It’s a piece of advice I give every edition of Hacking College — you can still buy a copy. It’s a piece of advice I give in the performance by the same name. It’s a piece of advice I give privately all the time. Most of you have attended college as a means of getting a better job and more money. My advice is not to be dependent on that job or career. Jobs and careers come and go especially now and more so in the future. What you want is multiple streams of income, multiple projects of interest going at the same time.

It’s common knowledge that I have several projects going on all the time. For much of the last decade Hacking College has my main project of interest. This might be the longest any one project has held the majority of my energy and attention. A few years ago, though, it became clear to me that one of my little side projects deserved more attention. So I gave it more attention. The more attention I gave it the more interesting and rewarding it became. Slowly, without my actually noticing it, the little side project became my main project.

To be honest there is a bit of denial built into that last sentence. It’s not that I didn’t notice. It’s more honest to say that I actively worked at not noticing this process was happening. Like I said, Hacking College is the longest I have done anything, And the prospect of ending it or even not doing it full time was something of an existential crisis for me that went something like this: I’ve gotten very comfortable being the Hacking College version of Dr. Dean. And I like that guy. I like him a lot. If I’m not that guy, who am I? Who’s this other guy, this new regenerated Dr. Dean? Is he still called Dr. Dean? These and other existential questions are still being sorted.

Part of this sorting has meant weaning off Hacking College. I sought out less speaking. I posted less to this blog. I spent way less time on Facebook. None of this was by design. It was more like that the regenerated Dr. Dean and his exciting new project kept demanding more time which I gleefully gave. Also, and there may be a bit more denial going on here, I didn’t think anyone would notice. Apparently, some of you have noticed and are concerned for my well-being. Fittingly, this was brought to my attention by a former student. All is very well with the regenerating Dr. Dean. I deeply regret causing anyone a moment of needless concern for me.

I am sorry I have dropped off the face of Facebook — actually I don’t miss Facebook. People, I miss. Facebook, I don’t miss. Regenerated Dr. Dean is not into social media and very much into Internet privacy/anonymity. To that end, there may come a day when I leave social media entirely — but that day is not on the immediate horizon. Until that day, I will try to make a more regular effort to check in on Facebook. There are also a few things I would like to improve in a new edition of Hacking College that I may get to this summer. The book is in a good place and with minimal care and feeding every so often can now continue for some time. This blog however will be whenever I get around to reworking the site.

Speaking? Yeah, about that. Let’s face it, all iterations of Dr. Dean LOVE working an audience. Hacking College is such a perfect project for me because I get to research, write, build multimedia and perform. All my favorite things, all the creative gifts I was born with, expressed in one tidy package. I have no intention of letting that go entirely. If we can work it out, I’ll still come speak. Personally, I have always felt I could rock a commencement address.

I have always tried during a performance to express my deep gratitude to the schools which have brought me in to speak and the individuals in the audience who have given me their time and attention. So one more time, I do thank you.

So that’s the story of my sabbatical, or regeneration, or sabbatical for regeneration. Oh I like the sound of that, “the sabbatical for regeneration.” Oh wait, this is it: Dr. Dean’s Sabbatical of Regeneration ;)

Personally I think you should go to college for an education. But if you are really just going to get a "better job" you may want to take a look at this piece from fivethirtyeight.com to help you pick out a degree. More @ Five Thirty Eight.

Some families dip into their retirement accounts to help pay for college. A Sallie Mae and Ipsos survey of 1,601 college students and parents of undergraduate students found that 7 percent of families took a withdrawal from a retirement account to help cover college costs in 2014, up from 5 percent in 2013. More @ USNews.

What's your priority? Your priority is both. Wealth comes through savings. The very very special savings never to tap is your retirement savings. You are not just speaking those saved pennies but all the other pennies it may accumulate.

One of the world’s largest automakers has stepped into the fringe of American education. Volkswagen has imported its German-style apprenticeship program to the U.S., and American labor officials hope it might become a model.

“It’s a totally different mindset. It’s a totally different culture,” says Ilker Subasi, who heads the Volkswagen Academy on site at the company’s Chattanooga plant. More@MarketPlace

What did Peter Cooper really intend to do when he founded one of the nation’s few free colleges? That was the question debated in a Manhattan courtroom on Friday as a group of students, faculty members and alumni mounted a legal challenge to the decision by Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art to begin charging tuition this fall. More@NYTimes

Families are taking fewer loans and using more of their own money to pay for college than at any point in the last five years. That’s according to a new study from Sallie Mae, the student-loan and financial-services company.

Money Quote:"I should say that this subject is very personal for me. Like so many kids today, I went off to college like a sleepwalker. You chose the most prestigious place that let you in; up ahead were vaguely understood objectives: status, wealth—“success.” What it meant to actually get an education and why you might want one—all this was off the table. It was only after 24 years in the Ivy League—college and a Ph.D. at Columbia, ten years on the faculty at Yale—that I started to think about what this system does to kids and how they can escape from it, what it does to our society and how we can dismantle it."

"A lot of the kids seemed to be using the program as more of a prestigious two year internship, kind of like a Rhodes Scholarship for tech, with scant regard for Thiel’s plan to disrupt higher education." More @ TechCrunch

The for-profit company Corinthian Colleges detailed plans Monday to sell 85 of its career-education campuses nationwide and shutter a dozen others, including two outposts operating under the Everest brand in the Washington region. More @ NYTimes

ASU "said that, for each third- or fourth-year student, it would provide College Achievement Plan scholarships of $2,420 per semester, based on a student enrolled for 12 credits. Prices vary for ASU Online’s degree programs, but that CAP scholarship would cover about 40 percent of the cost of several of the lower-priced programs. Depending on their financial need, students could also be eligible for need-based university grants of up to $1,000 per semester, plus Pell Grants and other government student aid." More @ The Chronicle of Higher Education

It's still not a bad deal and more corporations should help their employes is this sort of way.

In honor of college graduation season, Planet Money made a graph. It answers a few questions we had: What is the mix of bachelor's degrees awarded today, and how has the mix changed over the past several decades? Graph@Planet Money

"When you look at the national statistics on college graduation rates, there are two big trends that stand out right away. The first is that there are a whole lot of students who make it to college — who show up on campus and enroll in classes — but never get their degrees . . . The second trend is that whether a student graduates or not seems to depend today almost entirely on just one factor — how much money his or her parents make." More @NYTimes

"The wonks in training at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government will soon be subjected to a new and touchy-feely line of inquiry: Checking Your Privilege 101. In response to growing demand from student activists, administrators committed Friday to adding a session in power and privilege to its orientation program for incoming first-year students."

GASP!!!! A whole session. One session. Good luck with that Harvard.More@NYMag

Florida's Senate approved in-state tuition for illegal immigrants Thursday, setting the stage for the state to join others that have passed laws making higher education less costly for students without U.S. permanent residency. More@WSJ